Loretta Devine

  • Christmas Déjà Vu (2021)

    Christmas Déjà Vu (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2021) Yes, there is indeed something very familiar about Christmas Déjà Vu, as it focuses on a young woman’s dreams of fame and fortune as a signer, and enables the what-if through the intervention of an angel. Waking up a celebrity, our protagonist realizes (as these things usually go) that there’s some upside to a modest life and working hard to reach your goals. As Christmas movies go, Christmas Déjà Vu goes for sentimental epiphany rather than laughs or romance. Anchored by a remarkably polyvalent performance from Amber Riley (utterly de-glammed in the film’s opening moment, but able to step into the glitzy life of a celebrity later on), the film doesn’t go for any new narrative ground but does well with the limited means it’s working with. The subplots are familiar (of course her new husband is unfaithful) and so are the big realizations of the climax, but writer-director Christel Gibson knows what she’s going for, can benefit from good actors (including Loretta Devine as the protagonist’s mother) and makes the most of a low budget. It’s certainly not It’s a Wonderful Life, but Christmas Déjà Vu is an acceptable background feature as you decorate the house for the holidays.

  • Spell (2020)

    Spell (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) There’s something almost interesting in Spell’s blend of folk horror, evil hoodoo and deep-Appalachian setting. After some rather meaningless throat-clearing, the film starts in earnest after a small plane crash brings a middle-aged black family man (Omari Hardwick, nod bad) into the care of a backwoods witch doctor (Loretta Devine, surprisingly good) who places a lot more emphasis on being a witch than a doctor. This is all very spooky, of course, especially considering that the man’s family (which was also in the plane) is nowhere to be found, that he’s got a debilitating foot injury and that our witch doctor seems to have perfected the art of dark magic. The result does have its moments (including two gruesome scenes of body horror —ugh, that nail—that harken back to the obvious Misery comparisons) but they remain moments — there’s some horror, some dark humour, some suspense, and some drama, but they feel like bits and pieces of a first draft before the work begins to make the entire thing cohesive and tonally consistent. While it’s almost a relief to see the all-black cast evacuating the racial question, the result is so limp that you have to wonder if Spell would have benefited from some obviousness, or being more daring in tackling social issues. There’s this impression that director Mark Tonderai is barely holding all of this together, so scattered does he seem to be going from one element to another without a focal point. The repetitiousness of the middle act doesn’t help and the ending seems curiously familiar, not really bringing any of the plot threads to a satisfying conclusion. (Bizarrely, the script is from Kurt Wimmer—who’s usually a far more energetic writer.) In other words, the promising elements of Spell never comes into focus, and the result is disappointing no matter which angle you prefer. There’s a much better film to be made out of this, but this isn’t it.

  • For Colored Girls (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Adapting a theatrical play that relies on the strengths of that medium to the big screen in a risky exercise, and writer-director Tyler Perry doesn’t make things easy for himself in choosing to impose his vision on a fiercely feminist work. You can certainly feel the clunkiness at play when the film shifts gears from a rather straightforward (if harsh) melodrama to flights of eloquent soliloquies as the characters give voice to their innermost thoughts. As an ensemble movie with many ongoing subplots, For Colored Girls gets both the benefits of the form and its drawbacks — it can boast of a stellar cast in Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington and Whoopi Goldberg, plus a pre-stardom Tessa Thompson… I mean, wow. On the other hand, with no less than ten lead characters, the development of the subplots can be abrupt and sketchy. Coupled with Perry’s intentional lack of directorial flair and sometimes on-the-nose writing, it does make the film creak in places, and the accumulated melodrama (which gets absurdly dark in places) flirts dangerously with unintentional amusement. The biggest irony is that the film truly becomes magical in its most theatrical moments, as the women give voice to the stage soliloquies and unload the meaning of the stage play’s original title for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. (You can read some of the soliloquies, but they’re far from being as effective as when heard from actresses who get the cadence of the words.)  If nothing else, the film will make you wonder if you can find and listen to the original. It would be easy to focus on the film’s structural and directorial shortcomings — there’s something in Perry’s traditionalism that feels out of place (it’s hard not to notice that the film’s sole gay character is a self-loathing liar who gives AIDS to his wife — yikes) even as the film is a powerful progressive work by itself. Some of the weirdness even comes from the original play — it makes sense for all of the male characters (at one minor exception with little screen time) to be evil and destructive, considering the intent of the work to focus on women’s lives at their lowest point. Still, I rather like the result: It’s a wonderful showcase for the actresses involved, and when the film takes flight, it does carry the power of the original work. Even a decade and many more black-women-focused films later in a far more diverse cinematic landscape, For Colored Girls still packs some punch.

  • Waiting to Exhale (1995)

    Waiting to Exhale (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) While Waiting to Exhale isn’t that significant a movie in film history, it still plays so often on cable that it wore me down. I gave up and finally recorded it, although not out of exasperation. My intentions in watching it were not noble at all: Whitney Houston, Lela Rochon, Loretta Devine and Angela Basset headlining the film? I’ll watch that. An episodic story focusing on four women’s attempt to find love in spite of bad partners, Waiting to Exhale also features the directorial debut of Forest Whitaker, who imbues the film with odd stylistic choices that, perhaps unfortunately, precisely date the movie to the mid-1990s. Still, the movie itself is quite a bit of fun to watch. Our heroines don’t take cheating and romantic disappointment very well: in the film’s most memorable sequence, one sets fire to her cheating husband’s car, his clothes inside. While the episodic nature of Waiting to Exhale means that it has high and low points, the acting talent brought together here remains notable. Angela Basset, in particular, is at her best here with a powerhouse performance. The all-black casting is so successful in that by the time a white woman shows up (as a romantic rival, no less) late in the movie, the effect is definitely jarring. Among the male cast, Dennis Haysbert and Wesley Snipes have good roles, but viewers should be forewarned that this is not a movie in which men get the most admirable characters—this is female empowerment, and much of Waiting to Exhale’s success can be found in how completely and solidly it makes viewers (even white men such as myself) identify with the four black women protagonists.